You’ve spent endless amounts of time, energy and resources on developing that plan for success. It could be that you’ve poured your resources into a plan for a successful long-term relationship, business contract, new job, fund raising or even to hire someone to do some renovations in your home or office.

You think everything is going according to plan, then BAM, something happens outside of your control to derail your plan. We’ve all been there at one time or other.

What you decide to do amid the deconstruction of your plan (sounds so scary, but that’s how it feels), will be the deciding factor if you will convert the perceived loss into a win and come out of the situation successfully.

Here Are the Seven To Do’s to Convert Failure to Success:

1. Rationally and realistically assess the situation: Emotions get triggered when we don’t get our way. When things go awry, get in a calm state of mind and rationally assess the situation to determine if there is anything that can turn the situation around or if it’s time to put closure on the situation.

2. Take first things first: After the analysis in #1, it’s important to focus and prioritize the most imminent actions you must take, one step at a time, and not try to solve all your problems at once or out of rational sequential order. This ensures you highest chances of success most rapidly.

3. Stand up for yourself, your rights and your truth: If you have been wrongfully injured, stand up for yourself asap and seek the best support to represent your interests. Many fear this will make the situation worse, but the opposite is true. The sooner you take action, the sooner you will be able to maximally protect yourself and your interests and empower yourself to convert a loss to a win.

4. Know when to cut your losses and move on: After assessing the situation, be honest with yourself if the situation is no longer good for your wealth or well-being. Then move up and out with a strategy that is drama free as possible which may mean you may have to cut your losses by giving something up that ultimately serves to preserve your wealth and well-being in the long run.

5. Stay out of ego: When in conflict with others, stay out of ego and refuse to be baited into a power struggle. Ego will kick your butt every time and prevent you from being rational. Ego causes failure, but humility succeeds every time.

6. Always position yourself to maintain self-sufficiency: The mistake so many make, is to put all one’s eggs in one basket and often that basket is outside of one’s control. Don’t box yourself into a corner by turning your power over to just any one person, place or thing. Strive to keep independent and always to be self-sufficient.

7. Don’t give up on your goal: Failure is synonymous for “new beginning”. Those who succeed understand that failure is never permanent unless you let it be. Don’t ever quit on your goal. It will be achieved if you keep on keeping on. The situation, people or places my change, but your goal stays alive.

The time to quit on your goal is never. Take time to regroup, refresh, restore and then keep on moving forward. That’s how maximum success is achieved.

“I failed my way to success.” ~Thomas Edison

In Closing My Shocking Confession: As a child, I watched women of my mother’s generation suffer emotionally, physically and financially in many ways—at home, work or out in the world because they had been taught to be subservient and that the world was a patriarchal one. They had no voice, and no way to support themselves. They left or were forced to leave the “security” of their homes often to find themselves penniless and without shelter. It’s heartbreaking. And yet, this is still happening in the world today. And, not just among women. I have strived my whole life to stay empowered by understanding that people are human beings. None of us is perfect and people will fail us from time to time. But, if we rely on our faith, our own gifts and talents and ask for help, we can overcome any failure and triumph.

Mistakes happen. That’s just life. No more than now in our time in history, have human beings had more things pinging us, taking up our time and attention and causing us distractions.

Plus, none of us are perfect. We are all perfectly human, which means we are going to make mistakes from time to time. Making a mistake doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But, it does become bad to the bone if you don’t take responsibility for them.

I’ve seen people lose contracts, relationships, jobs, all their money and their own lives, by not owning up to their mistakes early on. The erroneous thinking behind the just say “no, I didn’t do it” mentality seems to stem from a belief that if they don’t assume responsibility for their error, they will avoid any negative consequences. But, nothing can be further from the truth. The fact is that the damage done will compound daily making it harder and harder to make it right and causing the cost of damages to skyrocket.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes. ~Winston Churchill

The Top Five Ways to Make Mistakes Work For Not Against You:

1. Remember honestly is always the best policy. If you are tempted to cover up a mistake, just take a moment to reflect on any of the multitude of events in history, whether it be in politics, entertainment or the news that prove the fact that there is no escaping mistakes and that the longer one waits to come clean, the worse the fall-out. Cut your losses, admit the truth and move on with creating success in your life.

2. Tender a sincere apology. There is nothing more disarming than a heartfelt apology and willingness to fix the mistake. Fighting begets more fighting, but taking responsibility paves the way for a better and stronger future with or without the other party.

3. Take stock of how/why the mistake was made. Were you working while too tired, trying to do too much on your own or to cut corners? Maybe you were engaging in a compulsive behavior or did something out of fear rather than out of rational thinking. Get to the bottom of why it happened and learn from it to make yourself become wiser, healthier, stronger and smarter.

4. Have compassion for yourself and others. Don’t beat yourself up for your mistakes. Make an amends, forgive yourself and move on. The more time and energy you spend on dwelling on it, only robs you of opportunities for greater success.

5. Take the 2nd step after sorry. Saying your sorry, is just the 1st step in the making an amends process. To move out of damages and into success, one must make a behavioral amends by taking the action now and in the future to prevent the same mistake from happening again.

If you want to achieve and sustain success, take responsibility for your mistakes and address them head on and early on to avoid losses and potentially permanent failure.

In Closing My Shocking Confession: I had asked my mortgage lender to modify my loan. Simple ask. Commonly done, especially during the great recession. I did it through the proper channels. I was being advised by my attorney how to do it within the proper guidelines of lending practices. Next thing I know, I receive direct contact from the CFO of this National Bank. I think that’s super cool…until…he turned into a predator. But, I didn’t know it until it was too late. All the documents he was requesting via email from me, I supplied easily and effortlessly, without ado. His tone started to become aggressive, argumentative and accusatory. Things started to spiral out of control. He tried to block me from making my mortgage payments forcing me into default. It was a nightmare. What he didn’t know, was that he just messed with the wrong person. I’m a champion of the truth. I had all his emails proving out his lies and when I confronted him with the lies, he just wouldn’t back down. He brought legal action against me. In the meantime, I contacted the lending oversight authorities and the Founder of the bank and supplied them with the evidence. Within a short time, I had a formal apology from the bank CEO, the legal suit dropped and a letter from the Founder letting me know that the CFO had been fired.

Bad communication can be disastrous for your company. You’ll feel the effects of communication errors in many ways, from minor mess-ups to major bad decisions.

Communication errors run deeper than just being unclear in your messaging. From using words that can undermine your intentions, to what your body language is saying, it’s a complex problem with very real consequences.

The most common error that I see from those in a leadership role is communicating when not in a clear, rational state of mind. If you’re frustrated, angry or experiencing physical pain, it is not the time to communicate. It will only prevent you from attaining the outcomes you want to achieve.